Why is ebola not a pandemic

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Advanced search. Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature. Download PDF. Subjects Developing world Diseases Infection Virology. Although the virus is exerting a heavy toll in West Africa, it does not spread easily. Health-care workers at an Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone.

Social sciences suffer from severe publication bias Ebola virus mutating rapidly as it spreads Scientific advice: Crisis counsellors. What about the risk of air travellers exporting the virus to other cities? Nature special: Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Wait, Ebola is hard to catch? So why is the outbreak continuing in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia?

What kind of sociocultural factors? Is the size of the outbreak unusual? Are there any drugs or vaccines for Ebola? What needs to be done to bring the outbreak under control? Authors Declan Butler View author publications. Rights and permissions Reprints and Permissions. About this article. Cite this article Butler, D. How is it spread? But the virus can spread to people through porcupines and other non-human primates too.

It spreads between people through direct contact with blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials, such as bedding or clothing, contaminated with these fluids.

Incubation period: The incubation period for Ebola ranges from 2 to 21 days, though the average is 8 to 10 days. Symptoms: The main symptoms are fever, severe headaches and muscle or joint pain, fatigue, and gastrointestinal symptoms, such as diarrhoea and vomiting.

Diagnosis: Polymerase chain reaction PCR testing is most frequently used to diagnose Ebola virus because of its ability to detect low levels of virus.

There are two licensed Ebola vaccines. In January this year, Gavi announced funding of a global stockpile , initially of the Ervebo vaccine, that would be available to all countries for outbreak response.

In October , the FDA approved its first treatment for Ebola virus: Inmazeb atoltivimab, maftivimab and odesivimab-ebgn , a mixture of three monoclonal antibodies. All Ebola outbreaks have so far started with a spill-over of the virus from animals to people. As with other zoonotic diseases, the key to avoiding this spill-over will mean changing the way we interact with the environment and with animal habitats. This means engaging with the sectors that drive disease emergence, such as land-use change, mining, livestock production and the wildlife trade.

Some have suggested incentives to avoid bushmeat hunting, an approach that has been trialled in central Africa, that includes education to reduce the consumption of primates found dead in forests. Containing human-to-human transmission through the use of infection control measures, including personal protective equipment PPE , strong hygiene and sanitation measures, and robust health systems is important. Surveillance to monitor zoonotic disease transmission and the human spread of outbreaks will be key, as will ensuring a robust contact tracing system.

Ebola also tends to cause pretty severe and identifiable symptoms, such as fever and fatigue followed by vomiting and diarrhea. Chan School of Public Health. This makes it easier to isolate infected individuals and protect health care workers to limit the spread, which is what occurred in the outbreak. In each of these cases, the viral outbreak lacked one of the key components that COVID has that allowed it to tip over into a global pandemic.

All combined, the novel coronavirus has led to an outbreak that is unusually difficult to track and control. The seismic shift in our everyday lives is happening for a reason. Between , and , people died in the first 12 months after the virus emerged; that range does not include all deaths since The article has also been updated to make clear that the swine flu infected over 1 billion people by the end of — again, that does not include all infections since All Videos YouTube.